Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to The Happy Stack Podcast, where we explore the science and strategies behind creating a happier, more fulfilling life. I'm Teriann Richards and I partner with organizations to address the root causes of burnout, disengagement, and stress, equipping leaders and teams with the tools they need to thrive, both organizationally and personally. Each episode we dive into practical habits, insights, and strategies to help high performers like you level up from the inside out. Let's get stacking.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Have you ever finished a workday completely exhausted? Looked at your to do list and somehow it was almost exactly the same as it was when you started the day, right? Like, you answered emails, you attended meetings, you replied to text messages, you put out a bunch of fires, you solved problems, you moved all day, you were doing stuff all day. But at the end of the day, five o' clock comes and you couldn't point to one meaningful thing that you actually finished that has ever happened to you. First, welcome to being human.
Second, newsflash. You're not failing at productivity. You're experiencing something that almost nobody talks about.
Being busy and being productive are not the same thing.
I'm going to say that one more time for the people in the back.
Being busy and being productive are not the same thing.
Somewhere along the way, we started confusing movement with progress. And today I want to explain why.
Welcome back to The Happy Stack and I am your host, Terianne Richards. If you've listened to the last episode, we talked about human capacity and the idea that your ability to perform isn't just about motivation or discipline. It's about how much mental and emotional space you actually have available.
Today, I want to take that one step further because one of the biggest thieves of your capacity is busyness itself.
Now, before you go and roll your eyes and think, easy for you to say, trust me, I have lived this.
In fact, I have built most of my career on being busy. I thought if my calendar looked full, I must be, you know, successful. And if I answered emails super quickly or a phone call or text messages or Facebook message or LinkedIn message, that I was being, you know, a good entrepreneur. I was responsive.
If I said yes to all the opportunities and all the shiny new objects that I was doing the thing, I was building my business. And maybe in some ways I was. But meanwhile, while all of that was occurring, I was freaking exhausted. And it wasn't even because I was working hard.
It's because I wasn't protecting my attention.
And attention is one of the most valuable things your brain has.
So I want you to Play a game with me. Imagine you're baking cookies.
Stay with me. Because I'm not even a baker, so this might have been a poor metaphor or analogy, so just stay with me for a second. Okay?
So you've got the flour out, the butter is soft, the oven is preheating.
And now your phone rings, okay? You answer it. When you come back, you remember you also need to pay a bill online, okay? So now you're paying a bill. So while you're paying the bill, an email pops up, okay? Then you answer that, because two seconds, right? You got time, right? And then your neighbor knocks on the door, right? Then your dog starts barking. And you remember you forgot to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer.
Now, how long do you think those cookies are going to take, exactly? Not because baking is hard, because you never stayed with one thing long enough to finish it.
And that's exactly how most of us work.
We're trying to bake six batches of cookies while folding the laundry, while answering emails, joining Zoom meetings, and we're wondering why we are so tired.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Research.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Call this context switching.
And every time you change tasks, your brain has to unload one set of information and then load another.
So think of it like changing apps on your phone. One app closes, another opens up. Now, imagine doing that 300 times a day, right? That is a lot of loading. And unlike your phone, your brain doesn't just instantly pick up where it left off.
There's research from Dr. Gloria Mark at the University of California, who. Who found that after an interruption, it can take more than 20 minutes to fully regain your focus.
20 minutes, y'. All.
Now, that doesn't mean that every interruption cost you 20 whole minutes, but it does mean that your brain leaves a little piece of itself behind every time it switches gears.
And psychologists call this attention residue.
And I like that phrase, because attention residue. That's exactly what it feels like. Part of your brain is still sitting in the last meeting or on the last task or in the last thing, while another part is trying to answer an email, while another part is already worried about tomorrow's presentation.
And I just want to throw this out there because I think it matters. Now, I don't play in the world of relationship, but you all know that I've written a book on relationships. I have another one that's coming out in the next year. Why? Because they say, you know the two most important relationships in your life for being someone who's flourishing and thriving and happy is the one you have with yourself. And the one you have with your intimate partner. And I think about this because I think of, you know, divorce rates and how often people are stating they're unhappy in their relationships. And I also think about the fact that we are forever switching context and dividing our attention. I think of the last time you went to a restaurant or, shoot, maybe you're guilty of this. When you went to a restaurant and you look around at the couples or just friends, how often people are just sitting there on their phone. They're sitting there with a real, live, breathing human, and they're on their phone. Or, you know, I'm guilty of this, sitting on the couch watching a show, and I'm trying to, like, catch up on work, but that means I'm dividing my attention between work, my husband, and a damn show.
And so it's like trying to drive with one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake, and somehow wondering why you're burning through the fuel.
And here's something else that I find very fascinating.
Your brain actually loves novelty.
So every notification, every ding, every vibration, every little red bubble on your phone, your brain gives you a tiny hit of dopamine.
And not because the email was important or the ding was important, because it might be, but it's because your brain likes uncertainty. Actually, it loves uncertainty. And that's why you check your phone, and then five months later, you check it again. Did I just say months later? I mean, five minutes later, you check it again, and even though nothing important has happened, you check it again, and then you check it again. Like, if my sister's listening to this, I apologize, but she was sitting with my husband just last week, and they were having great conversation, and he said every time the conversation got quiet, because, you know, that happens in life. We don't have something to say at all times. She picked up her phone, right? Does that sound familiar to any of you? And I wish I could tell you I was above this, because I'm not. Sometimes I'll unlock my phone to check the weather, and somehow I'm now watching someone pressure wash a driveway on social media.
Like, how did I get from the weather app to watching one of. What are they called? Like, a short? Or, you know, they're not all tiktoks, because sometimes I'm on Facebook watching it, but I don't even own a pressure washer. But here I am, completely invested in how clean they're making their driveway. And I just. I think, like, our brains are incredible, but they're so easily, incredibly distractible. And the workplace doesn't help. Open offices, slack messages, teams, notification, text emails, people popping into your office, virtual meetings, email calendar reminders.
It's almost as if we've designed work to make deep thinking impossible. And then we wonder why people are so overwhelmed. Imagine, I want you to imagine this for a second because this is scary. Imagine hiring a surgeon and every 90 seconds someone tapped them on the shoulder and says, quick question, quick question. I just have a question for you. Could you just look at this for a second?
That's ridiculous. Right now I get like our day to day is not like a surgeon who's like operating on someone know on the operating table. But yet that's how many of us expect knowledge workers to operate every single day.
And the irony is multitasking feels productive in the moment, right? It feels like you're getting more done. But science says the opposite. Your brain is not multitasking. It is task switching very quickly, super ineffectively, inefficiently.
And every switch burns energy. Every switch creates mistakes. Every switch leaves attention behind that attention residue.
It's like driving from Saint John to Moncton, but every 10 km you turn around and drive back to Hampton for a second. Like eventually you're going to get there, but you're going to burn a whole lot more gas getting there.
So what actually works?
I'm going to give you five things. Not because you know they're the end all be all.
Not because they're magical, but because they're practical.
So number one, protect your first hour like your life depended on it. Because it kind of does. Don't start your day in your inbox or on social media. When you begin your morning reacting to everybody else's BS and everyone else's priorities, you have literally already lost control of your own.
Number two, the batch. Similar type of work together. So block your calendar and answer emails together. Return phone calls in a similar block.
When you're doing like creative writing and copy, do that all together. When you're doing creation and innovation work, try to bunch that together.
Your brain will love it, but your brain like really likes staying in one mode. Okay, Number three, finish before starting.
We underestimate how much unfinished work weighs on us. Even if you think it doesn't, it does.
Every on finished task becomes another open browser tab in your brain and eventually everything slows down.
Number four, turn off the notifications on your phone, on your laptop, on your computer, on your tablet, on whatever else your watch. Oh my gosh. Sitting around with somebody when they are like talking to their watch or answering things in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of a business meeting or a board meeting. I have literally watched people do this. So shame on you if you are one of them. Okay, I love you. But also shame on you. Right? So turn off the notifications. Not forever, but do it while you're having meaningful connection with other people, while you're doing meaningful work. You do not need your phone announcing that someone liked a picture of your dog from 2019.
I promise you're going to survive, okay? Like you will. We did this before. I was around back in the day when we didn't have all this stuff and we survived.
Number five, schedule thinking time, not meeting time, thinking time.
Some of the smartest leaders I know that I have researched that I have oodles and oodles of books that I have read about. They block an hour in their calendar with no agenda. So it's not about emails, it's not about meetings. It's no phone, no electronics, no tv.
Just thinking.
Because great decisions rarely happen when we are rushing and context switching and doing all this attention residue building.
And here's something I want you to think about this week. Instead of asking yourself, was I busy today? Did I get a whole bunch of stuff done?
I want you to ask yourself in a different form, what did I actually move forward?
To me, those are very different questions.
One measures activity and the other one measures progress.
And progress, as we all know, is what changes your life. It's what changes your bank account, it's what changes your body. It's what changes your career. So I'm going to leave you with this.
You do not need to become faster. You do not need to become better at multitasking. You don't need to squeeze another productivity app onto your phone or buy another day planner.
You need fewer things competing for your attention because your attention is your capacity. And I want you to protect it. Because you're going to think more clearly, you're going to make better decisions, you're going to feel less overwhelmed. And strangely enough, you'll probably finish work with more energy than you started.
And it won't be because you did less.
It's because you stopped making your brain do ten jobs at once.
So I want to talk about in the future. I don't know what episode, but there's some things that are on my mind.
I want to talk about decision fatigue. I want to talk about why choosing what to wear, what to eat, what email to answer first, and what show to watch can drain the energy right out ya. And I've got some other ideas Percolating Listen Being busy is easy. Being intentional takes courage. And if you learn to protect your attention and your focus, you're going to be amazed at how much capacity you have had all along.
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please share it and keep stacking that happy peace.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Hey, thanks for listening to The Happy Stack podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe. Subscribe, Leave a review and share it with someone who could use a little extra happiness in their life. Let's keep stacking those wins together. See you next time.
